Ensure Risk-free SAP ECC to S/4HANA Migration with Risk-based Continuous Testing & Process Discovery
Ensure Risk-free SAP ECC to S/4HANA Migration with Risk-based Continuous Testing & Process Discovery
October 21, 2021
Sohaib Zaidi
With mainstream support for SAP ECC set to end in 2025, customers using SAP ECC need to migrate to SAP S/4HANA. By migrating to S/4HANA, customers can take advantage of enhanced user experience, new functionalities, features, real-time data, analytics, table simplification, and flexible APIs. However, migration to S/4HANA is not straightforward.
Although the data modeling layer remains the same, many changes have been made at the technical layer. Enterprises shouldn’t treat SAP ECC to S/4HANA migration as an upgrade.
“S/4HANA is completely different from SAP ECC. Not only in look and feel, but under the hood has changed. You can consider the migration as moving from a gasoline engine to an electric vehicle.” – Ekrem Hatip, Senior Solution Architect at Syntax
The term migration can also be considered misleading since S/4HANA, as a next-generation ERP, allows handling everything from a single place – transactions, analytics, and forecasting.
“To get S/4HANA up and running, enterprises require a clear vision consisting of the design of processes and data, and the subsequent deployment activities around testing and data conversion.” — Ranjit Rao, Principal and US Finance and Enterprise Performance Leader at Deloitte
Challenges in SAP ECC to S/4HANA Migration
- Migration to S/4HANA from SAP ECC requires several key decisions. However, enterprises need to understand how their business processes currently work in SAP ECC. “According to Brad Little, executive vice president and global head of application services at Capgemini, if you’re treating migration to S/4HANA as a technical upgrade then you might be undermining the value of S/4HANA. If you treat it like an upgrade, you’re basically taking all your junk and putting it in a new wrapper.”
- Many SAP ECC customers have extensively customized their systems over the years. It can be challenging for customers to convert those customizations into new features and introduce them in S/4HANA. With S/4HANA, enterprises can remove customizations and complexity to mitigate risks during the upgrade process.
- Since SAP advocates that development should move outside the ERP into the SAP cloud platform, existing SAP ECC customers may find it challenging to migrate their integrations. With S/4HANA, enterprises can use JavaScript, Python, or Spring to build services and APIs.
- Since SAP ECC and S/4HANA are fundamentally different in terms of technical aspects, enterprises migrating need to understand the impact of the new environment on existing configurations.
Addressing SAP ECC to S/4HANA Migration with Process Discovery & Risk-based Continuous Validation
To ensure a seamless migration, enterprises require a test-focused migration strategy. Since S/4HANA is designed to deliver continuous innovation and features, understanding the importance of the right test assets for regression testing is crucial. The right test automation asset for SAP ECC and S/4HANA should support the following points.
- Process Discovery – Migration to S/4HANA is an opportunity to embrace standard business processes and procedures. Enterprises should use AI-powered quality assurance frameworks that mine data across ERP, CRM, web applications, and databases to create a virtual twin of existing processes. This helps understand major process variations during migration.
- Change Impact Assessment – Enterprises need to comprehend the impact of migration from SAP ECC to S/4HANA. Existing functionality may not work in the new environment, and IT managers should select a test automation framework that operates in both SAP ECC and S/4HANA, providing real-time change impact assessments.
- Risk-based Test Recommendations – With frequent updates from SAP, blindly testing everything is not viable. Choose a SAP test automation framework that recommends test cases based on highlighted risks, ensuring adequate coverage while keeping testing cycles short.
- End-to-End Integration Testing – The test automation platform should validate multiple technology stacks including APIs, legacy apps, web, and mobile technologies. The automation framework should be scalable and integrable with continuous test management tools like JIRA, Jenkins, and Bamboo.
- Autonomous Healing – Maintaining test scripts can be arduous for test engineers. Opt for a SAP test automation platform that minimizes maintenance efforts by automatically identifying changed elements and rectifying them without human intervention.
Sohaib Zaidi
Technical Content Writer
Sohaib is a technology enthusiast and a passionate writer with vast experience in technical niches like IoT, AI, Cloud Computing, ERP, SaaS Software, and Business Intelligence. He enjoys creating impactful and compelling sales copies.